Women Against Shariah

Firebombs hurled at synagogue in Sweden after protest march about Jerusalem

(JTA) — More than a dozen men hurled firebombs at a synagogue in Gothenburg in southern Sweden hours after locals marched in the city against the United States’ recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

No one was injured in the attack Saturday night, which ended without injury, the online edition of the Expressen daily reported.

Dvir Maoz, the World Bnei Akiva youth movement’s emissary in Gothenburg, told JTA that the attack happened a little after 10 p.m. while youths from the local Jewish community were attending a party inside the synagogue complex. Looking outside from inside the synagogue lobby area, he said he saw in the corner of his eye “a ball of fire” approaching the building. “The guards saw it in the security cameras and called police right away. The children were stressed, it was the first time they had ever experienced a terrorist attack near them.”

The children’s parents were called to take them home after police arrived at the scene and scanned the area to make sure it was safe to come out, he said. The culprits had already left by the time police arrived. The building did not sustain any substantial damage that he could see, Maoz added.

As they waited for police to arrive, the children were taken down to the basement floor for safety, Laila Takolander, a member of the local Jewish community, told the Expressen daily.

Hours before the attack, which police are investigating, several hundred people marched through the city’s center in protest of President Donald Trump’s declaration on Wednesday that the United States recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, George Braun, the head of the community, told JTA. Police do not have suspects in custody.

At other protest rallies about Jerusalem in Sweden, Austria and France participants chanted, respectively, in Arabic about shooting Jews, an ancient massacre of Jews and freedom for Palestinian terrorists.

The Swedish rally where chants about shooting Jews were heard happened on Friday night in the southern city of Malmo, Sveriges Radio reported.

“We have announced the intifada from Malmö. We want our freedom back, and we will shoot the Jews,” some of in the rally of 200 demonstrators shouted, according to the public radio station. Intifada is the Arabic-language word for a violent uprising.

Earlier that day in Vienna, hundreds of participants in rally shouted in Arabic, “Jews, remember Khaybar, the army of Muhammad is returning.” The cry relates to an event in the seventh century when Muslims massacred and expelled Jews from the town of Khaybar, located in modern-day Saudi Arabia.

And in France, around 400 people gathered at Republique square Saturday, where they cheered when an organizers, wearing a shirt that promotes a boycott of Israel, said: “This demonstration is also about freedom for Hassan Hamouri, Marwan Barghouti and all the Palestinian prisoner.” The crowd shouted back: “Freedom to the Palestinian prisoners.”

Barghouti was sentenced by an Israeli court in 2004 to multiple life sentences for planning dozens of deadly terrorist attacks. Hamouri is a terrorist for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist group who was arrested by Israel in 2005 and imprisoned following his conviction of planning to assassinate the late Israeli rabbi Ovadia Yosef.

Hamouri, who is a French citizen, was released in exchange for the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, whom Hamas abducted in 2006. But he was arrested again, allegedly for violating the terms of his release by continuing to plan terrorist activities.

The speaker at the Paris rally also urged listeners to show their “solidarity and resistance.” They chanted “Natanyahu war criminal” and called for the arrest of the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, during his visit Sunday to France and Brussels, where he is scheduled to meet with several leaders of EU countries.

A smaller protest rally than the one held on Republique took place in the eastern city of Lyon Saturday.

Separately, Dutch police released from custody a 29-year-old Palestinian who on Thursday smashed the windows of a kosher restaurant in Amsterdam’s south while waving a Palestinian flag, the De Telegraaf daily reported. He will be tried on Dec. 20 for vandalism and theft, because he took out of the restaurant an Israeli flag before two police officers arrested him. The report did not whether he would also be tried for a hate crime.

At least 14 UN peacekeepers have been killed and 53 wounded in an attack in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The UN's Monusco mission said the peacekeepers were attacked by suspected rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) in North Kivu province.
Five Congolese soldiers also died.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said it was the worst attack on UN peacekeepers in recent history and amounted to a "war crime".

"I want to express my outrage and utter heartbreak at last night's attack. There must be no impunity for such assaults, here or anywhere else," he said.
Eastern DR Congo has suffered years of instability with rival groups fighting for control of territory.

A Monusco statement said rebels had launched an attack against an operating base at Semuliki in Beni territory on Thursday evening.
"This resulted in protracted fighting between suspected ADF elements and Monusco and FARDC [Congolese] forces," it added.

The head of Monusco, Maman Sidikou, said: "I condemn in the strongest terms this deadly attack on United Nations peacekeepers and the FARDC. Monusco will take all actions to ensure that the perpetrators are held accountable and brought to justice."

Writing on Twitter, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping, said reinforcements had been sent to the scene and medical evacuations were under way.

Tanzanian President John Magufuli said he was "shocked and saddened" by the news.

"The scale of people fleeing violence is off the charts, outpacing Syria, Yemen and Iraq," she said.

The killing of the Tanzanians, and several government troops, happened in a part of eastern Congo which has seen some of worst massacres over more than two decades of conflict. It is an area rich in mineral wealth and has seen interventions by neighbouring countries and a proliferation of warlords and militias whose common currency is a ruthless disregard for human life. All have contributed to the destabilisation that plagues the area.

The UN base was allegedly attacked by the Allied Democratic Forces - a militia whose roots are in Uganda but which now ranges across the borderlands between the two countries. The group is described as Islamist but, as with most of the groups in this area of great poverty and perpetual instability, motivations for attacks can be more varied than purely sectarian.

Conflict in Congo has continued to displace hundreds of thousands of people with violence erupting in different provinces - from the long running strife in the east to more recent conflagrations in Kasai and Tanganyika.

President Joseph Kabila has refused to step down despite completing the two terms in office allowed under the constitution - though elections are promised next year. Amid the growing tension the UN has just under 20,000 troops in a country two thirds the size of Western Europe. And even this force is being cut back as the US seeks to reduce the UN peacekeeping budget.
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A total of six people were killed and eight others sustained serious injuries in an improvised explosive device (IED) blast, fitted in motorcycle, in Mir Ali bazaar of North Waziristan Agency (NWA) on Tuesday evening, the political administration said.

According to political administration, the IED was planted in a motorcycle parked at the roadside in Mir Ali’s busy bazaar. The bomb exploded with a loud bang when the military convoy carrying civilians passed through there, killing six people on the spot and seriously injuring eight others.

The administration said that the injured were given first aid and referred to Bannu’s District Headquarters hospital in ambulances for medical treatment.

The political administration said that the IED-fitted motorcycle was used to target the military vehicle carrying three civilian candidates for recruitment in the army. All three, along with three other civilian by-passers, were killed.

Those who were killed in the blast include Asghar Ayub Khan, Ayub Rehman, Sher Man Ullah, Noor Ayub Khan, Naheed Ullah and Munib-ur-Rehman.

The military sources, however, said that a motorcyclist suicide attacker hit the army vehicle carrying the civilian candidates for recruitment at Mir Ali’s Khadi market. Three civilians were killed instantly, while six others sustained injuries, they added.

The sources confirmed that three civilian passing from there were also killed as a result of the blast, as there is a huge rush in the bazaar in the evening.

Soon after the blast, security forces cordoned off the area and started collecting evidence from the blast site.

A bomb blast killed eight people and injured 16 others on a bus in Syria’s Homs on Tuesday, state media said, citing the city’s health authority.

Islamic State claimed the attack, saying the blast killed 11 members of the Syrian army, its official news agency AMAQ said.

Many of the passengers were university students, Homs Governor Talal Barazi told state-run Ikhbariya TV. The blast in the government-held city hit the Akrama district, near al-Baath University.

Footage showed people crowding around the burned shell of a vehicle in the middle of a street. State television said “a bomb that terrorists planted in a passenger bus exploded”.

Islamic State militants had claimed responsibility for a similar attack in Homs in May, when a car bomb killed four people and injured 32 others.

A string of bombings have struck cities under government control in Syria this year, including the capital Damascus. The Tahrir al-Sham alliance -- led by fighters formerly linked to al-Qaeda -- has also claimed some of the deadly attacks.

“Security agencies are constantly chasing sleeper cells,” the Homs police chief said on Ikhbariya. “Today, it could be a sleeper cell or it could be an infiltration.”

Barazi, the governor, said the state’s enemies were trying to target stability as “the stage of victory” drew near.

The city of Homs returned to full government control in May for the first time since the onset of Syria’s conflict more than six years ago.

With the help of Russian jets and Iran-backed militias, the Damascus government has pushed back rebel factions in western Syria, shoring up its rule over the main urban centers. The army and allied forces then marched eastwards against Islamic State militants this year.

The United States has voiced concern about Syrian and Russian attacks. The U.S. State Department on Tuesday strongly condemned attacks this week on eastern Ghouta believed to have been carried out by Syrian and Russian jets.

The jets struck crowded residential areas in the besieged rebel enclave near Damascus on Sunday, killing at least 27 people, aid workers and a war monitor said.

“Deliberate tactics to starve Syrian civilians, including women and children, block humanitarian and medical aid, bomb hospitals, medical personnel and first responders in eastern Ghouta, we consider that to be deeply troubling,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.

She urged Russia to live up to its obligations to uphold the de-escalation zone in eastern Ghouta.

Islamic State-inspired militants killed two villagers and left seven wounded in an attack in Shariff Aguak town in Maguindanao on Sunday night.

Four of those injured were children.

The fatalities, Unti Kamama, 60, and his 13-year-old grandson, Mohammad Kamama, died from multiple gunshot wounds.

Responding police and Army investigators said a soldier, PFC Clinton Rigor of the 40th Infantry Battalion, was also wounded in the incident.

Some 30 gunmen from the outlawed Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters first attacked an Army detachment in Barangay Timbangan in Shariff Aguak on Sunday evening.

Another group of bandits also fired at nearby houses, killing the Kamamas and wounding the four children.

Also reported wounded were Aila Amor, Tukay Kamama and Ela Tayog.

The BIFF, which splintered from the MILF in 2010, uses the flag of the Islamic State — also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria — as its banner.

Maj. Gen. Arnel Dela Vega of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division said Wednesday the latest BIFF attack was meant to avenge the deaths of more than 30 members killed in recent offensives by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and units of 6th ID.

MILF forces have killed 27 militants in one of three BIFF factions, the one under Esmael Abdulmalik, in encounters from the last week of July to early September.

The MILF launched the offensive against Abdulmalik and his men after they attempted to hoist the ISIS flag in strategic areas in Maguindanao’s Datu Salibo and Shariff Saydona Mustapha towns.

More than ten BIFF gunmen under another faction under Imam Bongos were also reportedly killed in an operation last month by the Army’s 57th, 19th and 40th Infantry Battalions at the boundary of Maguindanao’s Datu Unsay and Shariff Aguak towns.

Senior Superintendent Agustin Tello, director of the Maguindanao police, said community elders in Shariff Aguak have confirmed that followers of Imam Bongos were behind the harassment of the Army detachment in Barangay Timbangan on Sunday night.

Abu Misry Mama, spokesman of the BIFF’s Bongos faction, said the attack was part of their continuing offensive against the police and the military.

Tello said Shariff Aguak Mayor Marop Ampatuan is now helping provide for the needs of villagers wounded in the attack.

Ampatuan said his office will also allocate funds for those recuperating in a hospital.

"I’m appealing to these armed groups not to roam in populated areas for innocent villagers not to get hurt," Ampatuan said.

The mayor said their municipal peace and order council will work to prevent a repeat of the incident.

Nicholas Young is sure a jury will agree he's no radical Islamic terrorist.

First he might have to convince them he's not a neo-Nazi.

"I can't wait to go to trial," Young said in a phone interview from a Virginia jail. "Frankly, my case isn't like any other terrorism-related case that anyone's ever brought forward."

He's right. Young is the only U.S. police officer to ever face terrorism charges - a case brought after he was under FBI surveillance during six of the 13 years he patrolled the D.C. Metro system.

The 36-year-old Alexandria, Virginia, native is also a Muslim convert who used to dress up as a Nazi officer in reenactments, according to court documents, and kept a prayer list that included Saddam Hussein and Hitler. And he's a Ron Paul supporter who used his vacation time to fight in a civil war on the other side of the world.

At a trial set for December in Alexandria, federal prosecutors plan to pursue a novel argument. They will paint Young as a violent-minded believer in an alliance between Islamic and white supremacist terrorism at a time when both are sowing fear across the country.

"It's a unique case, it's a unique defendant," Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg said in court last month. "The defendant was an adherent of both . . . the common enemy is hatred of the Jews."

Young says his historical enthusiasms and dark sense of humor have been distorted to wrongly portray him as man with long-standing terroristic proclivities. His only crime, he contends, was trying to help a friend who turned out to be an FBI informant. His defense team argues he was entrapped.

"They're really grasping at straws here, trying to take everything I said out of context and take it in the most sinister light," Young said. During an hours-long interview from the Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw, Virginia, this summer, he discussed his interest in military history, his relationship with the FBI and his two trips to join rebel groups fighting against Moammar Gadhafi in Libya.

The alleged crime for which he was arrested in the summer of 2016 was nonviolent; he is accused of lying to the FBI about someone he thought had joined the Islamic State and sending that person $245 in mobile messaging cards. There was no threat to the Metro system, officials emphasized at the time.

But Young's words and interests, some of which a judge has ruled could be used against him at trial, were incendiary. He honored a pre-Nazi far-right German group on his license plate, tattooed the logo of an S.S. unit on his arm and used Hitler's birthday as an online password. Authorities say he joked with informants about wanting a female slave, smuggling weapons into federal court, and torturing and killing FBI agents.

Young was first contacted by the FBI in 2010 as authorities were investigating an acquaintance he knew through college and a local mosque. Court papers say Young told agents he was shocked by the allegations against Zachary Chesser, who was ultimately convicted of trying to join an al-Qaida-linked terrorist group and threatening the creators of "South Park." (Chesser, the defense says, later indicated he remembered Young as a conservative police officer uninterested in jihad.)

In the years that followed, Young never left the FBI's radar. He said alarming things to an undercover officer, according to court papers, including vowing that anyone who betrayed him would end up at the bottom of a lake and bragging about his stockpile of weapons. The officer introduced him to Amine Mohammed El Khalifi, who would later be convicted of plotting to bomb the Capitol.

While Young's violent comments kept him under scrutiny, for years his behavior never crossed a criminal line. Friends and family say that he is no extremist or racist, just unusual. They point out that he had friends and girlfriends of various races and religions.

"My brother doesn't have an aggressive bone in his body," his sister Ashley Young said, and only talks about violence in a cartoonish, "Quentin Tarantino-esque" way. He loves fantasy and anime.

"You would have to know him to know that," she said. "If you put it in print, it looks different . . .The only thing extreme about my brother is his video-game playing."

The two had a happy and unremarkable childhood in the D.C. suburbs, raised by divorced parents who stayed on good terms. Nicholas Young considered joining the Army out of high school but did not want to upset his father, a teacher. So he enrolled at George Mason University and joined R.O.T.C., where he learned following military orders was not for him.

Attention issues kept him from earning a degree. Though he was interested in getting a job with Fairfax, Virginia, police or the FBI, Young ended up leaving college to work in security. In 2003, he became a Metro Transit Police Department officer.

Young told his family about his new career by leaving invitations on their doorsteps to his academy graduation.

"He's very stubborn and independent, except if he's in a relationship - then it's whatever the girl he's with wants," Ashley Young said.

Raised Catholic, Young said he began studying Islam in college and decided to convert in 2006, the year his father died. He didn't like how Catholic doctrine would change, he said, and came to see Islam as a more constant faith.

"Religion shouldn't evolve unless new prophets come around," he said.

As a transit officer, Young said he never used his gun, baton or pepper spray. In 2006, he earned a commendation from the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office for apprehending a robber armed with a large knife without using a weapon.

But he said he also was once or twice reprimanded for not issuing enough tickets to turnstile-jumpers.

"I was a little soft on things," he said. "The person doing that doesn't have the money to pay; I'm not really doing them any favors by giving them a six-dollar ticket."

Fellow officers said Young was considered strange because of his penchant to prattle on about history and his passive approach to the job.

"Nick wasn't just your average police officer," former station manager Henry Marrow said. "He didn't like to push people over . . . He didn't believe that people should be arrested for minor stuff."

But Facebook rants about the government and his known history as a Nazi reenactor also made many fellow Metro police officers wary, as did the large beard Young began to grow. Around 2008, officials there took their concerns to the FBI, although the agency did not begin investigating Young for another two years.

If Young was concerned about his co-workers' opinions, he didn't show it. In 2011, he openly used his paid leave to help topple the Libyan government. By his telling, his first trip to the war-torn country was a decision born of impulse and a canceled vacation.

Young said he had made plans to go to a death metal concert in Japan, but the Fukushima nuclear disaster scared him off. With vacation time saved up, he needed something else to do.

Young had been following news of the unfolding civil war in Libya. Moved by the struggle of people there and excited by the idea of a revolution, he decided to join rebel groups. Later that year, he went a second time.

"During my entire time there I never shot at anyone because I didn't need to; everyone shooting at me was too far away," he said.

He disputes that the men he fought with were extremists, though court papers say that in a text message later on he asked about members of an Islamic militia.

"Nothing was transmitted to me about sharia law or any other kind of political ambitions," he said. The men he was fighting with, he added, wanted help from the American government, as well as Michael Jackson cassettes and Los Angeles Lakers paraphernalia - "they were just normal guys."

A co-worker warned Young that the FBI was looking into his travel and he quickly returned home.

When Young arrived back in the United States, he was met at the airport by two FBI agents.

Authorities debated whether they could arrest him then, court documents show, but the Justice Department ultimately declined. Instead the agents suggested he become an undercover informant.

"They were very fake-friendly," Young said, offering financial and professional help.

He declined.

"I would have just been going after people, looking for their weaknesses, so they could tailor something to infiltrate their life," Young recalled.

Now he says the same thing happened to him, with informants repeatedly coming his way. In 2014, a shy 20-something named Mohammad stuck.

"They very cleverly created this character of a sympathetic figure," Young said. "When he was talking about going overseas, the reason was to fight [Syrian President Bashar] Assad. . . . It was totally humanitarian . . . 'He's killing women and children, he's killing civilians, people are being buried alive.' And at no time did he show himself to be particularly religious."

A friend who asked not to be named to keep his family out of the public eye said he also met the informant. "You couldn't read the kid, he was very awkward, very weird - a putz," the friend said. "He pulled at Nick's heartstrings . . . I told Nick, 'I think this guy is an informant.' And Nick laughed."

The friend said he believes that to get Young to send gift cards, Mohammad told "him some sob story about needing to reach his family."

Young would not comment on the details of the gift card allegation.

Authorities in court papers say Mohammad exposed Young's radical inclinations, not his tenderheartedness. In recorded conversations, Young expressed disdain for mosques that preach "jihad of the pen" and argued terrorist attacks were understandable reactions to Western aggression.

"At no time did I ever praise the attacks," Young maintained, "nor ever encourage any attacks against civilians." He once called the Islamic State a "gang of criminals," according to defense filings, and repeatedly told informants he would not break the law.

To make a case that he was entrapped by the FBI, Young will have to show he was not predisposed to support terrorism before he was first contacted by agents in 2010. That's why the Nazi evidence, which predates his known interest in radical Islam, is important to the government's case.

Young said much of the offensive material found in his home and on his computer was from a college class on European racism. And that along with Nazi knives and pins, his collection included a Vietnam-era British flak vest, a Scottish breaksword, a Japanese Samurai sword, Russian Navy medals and a medieval coat of arms.

The World War II reenactments in which he dressed up as an S.S. officer were "just good fun, he said. "It's dead politics - it was a political movement that took place 60, 70 years ago."

But Young is also unabashedly anti-Israel, agreeing with Ron Paul that American support for the country has only caused more problems in the Middle East. Evidence shows he used an Israeli flag as a doormat and drove with a bumper sticker reading "Boycott the terrorist state of Israel."

Nicholas Smith, a defense attorney for Young, said in court last month that the government was smearing his client in a way that defied "common sense." "White supremacism and militant Islam," he said, "are mutually inconsistent."

Kromberg disagreed, pointing to Young's own apparent interest in the historical connections between Hitler and Muslim leaders. One witness, Kromberg said in court, will testify that after going to a fascist rally in 2000, Young opined, 'Don't discount the idea of an alliance with the Muslims to combat the Jews.'"

Young went to that rally, held by the far-right British National Party, as part of his George Mason class, he says. He earned an A- in "History 387 - Myth of a Master Race."

Young, whose trial is set to begin Dec. 5 on charges of attempted material support for terrorism and obstruction of justice, is confident such explanations will show he is neither a neo-Nazi nor a Islamist militant.

ALL schools in Kuantan must hold a mass prayer before students go home.

District education officer Mohd Razali Mustafar said this was because prayer was a key element in character building, especially for schoolchildren, and would strengthen them and prevent them from getting involved in social ills.

“In striving for excellence, we are focusing on five main elements, namely character building, information and communications technology, English proficiency, middle leaders (teachers) and smart multiplication.

“As such, each school must hold a mass prayer in any suitable area in the school compound,” he said when opening the Academic Excellence Award Day at SK Bukit Goh in Kuantan.

He said he targeted 10% of male Muslim students in the district to be able to recite the Quran and lead doa selamat and tahlil prayers, and become an imam.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has saved an Assyrian/Syriac woman who had been missing for three years. She hails from Qaraqosh in the Nineveh Plains, Northern Iraq-the part of the country where the indigenous community was nearly wiped out following the invasion of ISIS.

Rita Habib Ayyoub was rescued from a village close to the city of Deir ez-Zur in Syria. While anxiously awaiting a reunion with her family in Iraq, she is being cared for by an Assyrian/Syriac women’s organization in northeast Syria.

“When ISIS invaded Qaraqosh, my father and I were kidnapped by the terrorists. They took us to a hospital in the city of Mosul. They split the women and the men up. I haven’t heard anything about my father since.”
Qaraqosh, also known as Baghdede, was emptied of it’s Assyrian/Syriac/Chaldean Christian population when ISIS invaded in the summer of 2014. Most managed to flee. Others disappeared without a trace. The fear was that all those who were missing had been killed, but some have miraculously been rescued, a majority of whom have been found in Iraq.

Rita Habib Ayyub is the first known survivor to have been found in Syria. In an interview conducted earlier today by Gozarto Bethnahrin of Syria, the Assyrian/Christian women’s organization, she shared details of the horrors she encountered at the hands of the terrorists over the last three years.

“My name is Rita. The terrorists changed my name to Maria. I am 30 years old. In the hospital in Mosul, we women were subjected to the most degrading abuse. Three children from my people were with me, and I witnessed them being sold to emirs in Mosul. I was sold to Abu Mus’ab al-Iraqi. In his home, there was also a Yazidi girl from Sinjar named Shata…she was only 14 years old. He raped the both of us over and over again.”
The ISIS leaders are called emirs. The rapes and sexual abuse was not enough. The emir, Abu Mus’ab, enjoyed torturing them in more ways than that. She continued.

“He made us watch videos with terrorists slaughtering non-Muslims. In one of them, they were beheading Shata’s brother.”
After half a year, he got tired of Rita and felt that it was time to earn some money off of her.

“After six months, Abu Mus’ab sold me to another terrorist, and I was transported to Raqqa, Syria. But he did not keep me…he sold me to a third terrorist, a Saudi named Abu Khalid al-Saudi.”
In the Al-Saudi household, she was routinely beaten severely by the terrorist’s first wife. And the quest to forcefully convert her to Islam began again.

“Abu Khalid was married to a woman from Morocco. I was beaten and tortured by her every day. She would not give up until I was bleeding, from my head, for example. They made me read the Quran and threatened to kill me if I did not convert to Islam.”
A few months later, she was sold again.

“After four months in Raqqa, I was transported to Abu Kamal, on the border between Syria and Iraq. I was there for a year and four months, then I was moved once more, this time to the village of outside of Deir ez-Zur.”
It was there that the SDF managed to rescue Rita.

Police on Wednesday recovered bodies of a Hindu boy (15) and a Muslim girl (14) from different places in Bihar’s West Champaran district and suspected the two might have been killed over an affair.

The West Champaran police arrested three relatives of the girl and said that they are waiting for the postmortem report for further investigation. The boy and girl, from adjoining villages of Nautan, studied in different schools. The boy had gone missing on Monday night.

Nautan police station in-charge Kundan Kumar said the girl’s body was recovered from the bank of Chandravat river near Khap Tola. He said that the boy’s body was recovered from Sareh. “Prima facie investigation suggests the two were killed over an affair by the girl’s relatives. We have arrested the girl’s brother Alauddin Ansari and uncles — Gulsanovar Mian and Aamir Mian — on suspicion of killing the two.”

The boy’s father Ravikant Sah from Banhoura village is a small businessman, while the girl belonged to a family of small farmers from Khap Tola village. The boy’s father told police that he had received information about his son’s murder, but he could not gather the courage to look for his son.
Nautan police station in-charge said, “There is no communal tension. But we have been vigilant to ensure there is no law and order problem.” Additional police forces have been deployed in both villages to avoid any communal tension.

“The body of the girl was dumped into a gorge, smeared with salt and covered with mud close to the Chandravat river. The body has been exhumed by the police. The boy’s body was recovered 2 km away from the girl’s house,” Superintendent of Police, Bettiah, Vinay Kumar told PTI.

Three people were killed and nine injured in a violent confrontation between Deobandi and Barelvi religious groups in Jani Burira village in Sindh's Khairpur district on Thursday.

Participants in a rally clashed with participants of another rally, held to mark Eid Miladun Nabi, at the Ameer Shah Chowk, Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Azfar Maheser told DawnNews.

The deceased and the injured were shifted to a local hospital. Those killed in the incident were identified as Mushtaq Ahmed, Abdul Latif and Zulfiqar Buriro.

The injured were identified as Noor Ahmed, son of Qadir Bux Buriro, 30; Liaquat Ali, son of Abdullah Buriro, 30; Dodo Khan, son of Gulab Khan Buriro 19; Mohammad Suleman, son of Nek Mohammad Buriro, 50; Qurban, son of Abdullah Buriro; Ghulam Shabbir, son of Munir Ahmed, 19; Shahbuddin Dharejo, son of Ghulam Shabbir Dharejo, 27; and Imtiaz, son of Sobho Khan Katohar, 38.

One of the injured, who is stated to be in critical condition, was shifted to Larkana from Khairpur later in the day.

The provincial Director General of Health Services, Akhlaq Ahmed Khan, confirmed to Dawn that three bodies and seven injured were brought to Khairpur District Headquarters Hospital.

"The injured are being managed," he said.

Kot Diji police picked up 12 suspects following the incident. SSP Azfar Mahesar told Dawn that these suspects also included some who were already wanted by police in different murder cases.

He said that 10 empty cartridges from a 9mm pistol and one from a sub-machine gun were found from the site of the incident.

Another police officer said that activists of a banned outfit were responsible for the incident and the name of one of the suspects, Paryal Shah, was already included in the Fourth Schedule.

"He was among the people who had objected to the holding of the Eid Miladun Nabi procession 'without his permission,'" the officer said.

Sindh Home Minister Sohail Anwer Sial and Inspector General of Police (IGP) A.D. Khawaja have taken notice of the incident and have demanded a detailed report from SSP Mahesar.

IG Khawaja told Dawn that the police is investigating whether a banned outfit was involved in the incident and assured that strict action would be taken against those responsible. He added that the area has been cordoned off by police and Rangers officials to ensure that there are no further clashes.

The IG also said that the law and order situation is being reviewed in view of Eid Miladun Nabi, which falls on Friday.

The heirs of the deceased staged a sit-in outside the Khairpur SSP's office Thursday evening with the bodies of the men killed to demand the arrest of those involved in the attack.

Reports from Khairpur state that former chief minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah has summoned SSP Azfar Mahesar and directed him to ensure the arrest of the culprits forthwith.

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MISSION STATEMENT

It is our position that shariah law imposes second class status on women and is incompatible with the standards of liberal Western societies and the basic principles of human rights that include equality under the law and the protection of individual freedoms. The shariah code mandates the complete authority of men over women, including the control of their movement, education, marital options, clothing, bodies, place of residence and all other aspects of their existence. Further, it calls for the beating, punishment, and murder of women who don’t comply with shariah requirements.
In our efforts to stem the encroachment of shariah in the West, we are focusing on the following objectives:

Education of the American public about the inherent human rights violations and the attempt to undermine or replace U.S. law and American statutes with Islamic shariah

Alerting policy makers and legislators to potential human rights and equal rights violations and working toward the development of possible remedies and legal actions

Building coalitions with like-minded organizations to develop policy initiatives and interventions for victims of shariah.

IMPORTANT TERMS

Shariah: an all-encompassing and in-transmutable system of Islamic jurisprudence, found in the Koran and the Sunnah, that covers all aspect of life, including daily routines, hygiene, familial roles and responsibilities, social order and conduct, directives on relationships with Muslims and non-Muslims, religious obligations, financial dealings and many other facets of living.

Ird: the sexual purity of a woman that confers honor to her husband, family and community. Ird is based on the traditional standards of behavior set forth in the shariah code and includes subservience to male relatives, modest dress which could include veiling and the covering of the body, and restricted movement outside of the home. The loss of a woman’s ird confers shame upon her family and can result in ostracism by the community, economic damage, political consequences and the loss of self esteem.

Zina: the Koranic word for sexual relations outside of marriage. Under shariah law, Zina is punished by lashings, imprisonment or stoning to death.

FGM: female genital mutilation refers to the partial or complete removal of the female genitalia for religious and cultural reasons. It is practiced to preserve a female’s chastity and dampen her sexual desire. FGM is permitted in the Koran but required by the Shafi’i, one of the four schools of shariah law within Sunni Islam.

Honor Killing: a murder, usually of a female, committed to restore the social and political standing of a family or community when it is believed that the victim has violated traditional behavioral expectations. Such violations can include improper covering of the body, appearing in public without a male relative chaperone, talking to an unrelated male, or exhibiting independence in thought and action. An honor killing can also be based on hearsay or gossip that is perceived as damaging to a woman’s relatives.

Forced Marriage: a marriage that is conducted without the consent of one or both parties in which duress is a factor. Such duress can include violence or physical intimidation, psychological abuse, blackmailing, kidnapping, or threats of imprisonment or institutional confinement.

SLAVERY IN ISLAM

Islam permits the taking of slaves as “booty” or as a reward for waging jihad. Slavery became a Muslim tradition at the time that Mohammed moved to Medina and amassed sufficient power for the enslavement of non-Muslims.
Slavery is an accepted part of Islamic society and is never viewed in a negative way in the Koran, Sira or Hadith. In fact, it is a God-given right for Muslims to have slaves.
[6:7] Allah has given more of His gifts of material things to some rather than others. In the same manner, those who have more do not give an equal share to their slaves so that they would share equally. Would they then deny the favors of Allah.

Although Islam has sustained slavery for 1400 years, a Muslim may never be enslaved. Only non-believers or kafirs may be enslaved and may be eligible for freedom upon conversion to Islam at the discretion of the slave owner. Slavery is viewed as a moral good in Islam as it transforms a kafir into a believer.

Slaves have no means for legal action in Islam and their rights are based solely on the good will of their master. If a slave flees his master, this is view as a sin against Allah.

Slaves have few civil or legal rights.

The following are rules pertaining to slavery from the Shariah:

1) Muslim men may have sex with female slaves at any time and it is not possible to “rape” a slave.

2) Slaves have the same status as animals and it is permissible to whip them.

3) No Muslim can be put to death for murdering a slave.

4) A slave’s testimony is inadmissible in court.

5) Slaves can be forced to marry whomever their master chooses and may not choose their marriage mate.

6) Christians and Jews who do not pay the jizya or protection tax can be enslaved.

In his book, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters, historian Robert Davis estimates that North African Muslims abducted and enslaved more than 1 million white Christian Europeans from the coastal towns from Sicily to Cornwall between 1530 and 1780. Muslim slavers also seized people from Britain, Ireland, Iceland and even American seaman on ships in the Atlantic.

In a recent case of Muslim slavery in the United States, Sarah Khonaizan and her husband Homaidan Al-Turki were arrested for forced labor, sexual abuse and harboring an alien for enslaving an Indonesian housekeeper in their home in Colorado.
The couple reportedly brought the housekeeper to Colorado from Saudi Arabia to care for their five children and to cook and clean for the family. The Indonesian woman slept on the basement floor, was paid less than $2 per day and was the victim of rape.
Al-Turki and his defense attorney complained that they were being persecuted for their beliefs and stated, "The state has criminalized these basic Muslim behaviors. Attacking traditional Muslim behaviors was the focal point of the prosecution."
Al-Turki received letters of support from the local Muslim community and from his academic colleagues at the University of Colorado.
This case continues to arouse strong feelings in Saudi Arabia where there is great sympathy and support for Al-Turki.
On March 26, 2008, a high level Saudi official brought up the case in a meeting with Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff. He urged Americans to review the case and mentioned the strong support for Al-Turki in Saudi Arabia.

RELIGION OF PEACE

IMPORTANT NOTE

Click on the title of each story in order to go to the original news story. Women Against Shariah does not claim copyright on any of the stories. This site should be considered a repository of news stories relating to Islamic matters. We aim to put all relevant news on this site so our viewers can locate these important stories in one place. Thank you.

ABOUT US

The mission of Women Against Shariah is to prevent and outlaw the imposition of shariah law in the United States for both Muslim and American women as either a parallel legal system or a replacement for existing laws. Additionally, we hope to empower women worldwide to resist shariah.